http://mohitmamoria.com/Ghost 0.5Thu, 22 Feb 2018 04:26:27 GMT60Here's the scene. Chilly winters - 8 degree celsius - you wake up curled in your quilt, you open your eyes and see the clock - it’s 7am already - time to wake up. You sigh and decide to close your eyes for 2 more minutes. Your alarm go off.

“Ugh!” you say.

You turn off the alarm and still curled up in your warm quilt, you check your email, Twitter and Hacker News. But now the time has arrived - to get out of the bed and start your day. But you don’t want to get out of this warmth. But you have to - there’s no choice. You lay straight on your back looking at the ceiling and wondering, “Do I really need to get out in this cold weather? Why? What would happen if I don’t get out? Or if sleep for some more time?”

Following the trail of questions, you stumble upon a wonderful one - “What is the one thing I want to do in life?”

You find that the question, on a scale of 0 to "pizza", can be marked as "cheese-burst pizza", and decide to answer it.

“Build a huge organisation, by 2030, that will be a home to every stray animal and bird. To have everything - hospitals, playground, people - to take care of them.”

Interesting. This was the first time you’ve spoken up your life’s ambition so clearly. Another question pops up in your mind.

“What is the one thing I need to do to build that organisation?”

“I will need a lot of money and people to support the cause,” you reply yourself.

And then comes another cheese-burst pizza level question.

“What is the one thing I need to do to get a lot of people and money?”

“I will need to build a company and make it exit through an IPO by 2020.”

Now, this is turning into a very interesting game. You no longer feel the chilly weather outside. The warmth of quilt is embracing you from neck to toe and all you could think of is the next question.

“What is the one thing I need to do to build a company and take it to exit?”

“Execute the plan. Work on it. Every single day.”

“What is the one thing I need to do to execute the plan?”

“I will need to meet the people I had promised to meet, write the software I had planned to write, call the investors I had scheduled a call with.”

“What is the one thing I need to do to finish my today’s tasks?”

“Get out of the bed. In the chilly winters. Work. Hustle. Grind. Every fucking minute till 2020.”

And then suddenly you come to senses, no longer feeling the cold. You no longer pay heed to the mist outside your window. You have got the warmth within yourself that can keep you going the whole day.

You summarise down the whole thing into one sentence - “If I get out of my bed everyday and hustle, I can bring smiles on thousands of stray animals.”

You imagine yourself standing in a wide green pasture. Towers, barns, hospitals, scattered all around the pasture. You see yourself surrounded by smiling cats, joyful dogs, chirping birds, quacking ducks, croaking toads and squealing pigs. All you can think of still is this - “If I get out of my bed everyday and hustle, I can bring smiles on thousands of stray animals.”

You step out of your bed, not feeling the cold anymore, and begin your day with the bigger purpose in your heart.

Everyday, as soon as you wake up, you just think how stepping out of the bed will end up giving a happy life to thousands of strays. And this thought makes you jump out of the bed - even in the winter mornings.

You do it every single day because you know:

Motivation can only get you started, what will keep you going is a habit.

]]>http://mohitmamoria.com/getting-out-of-bed/05732a30-3b53-456e-a009-05c4b75c693cThu, 18 Dec 2014 06:06:13 GMTA blank canvas. I adore a blank canvas. Anything can be crafted out of it. When I sit down to write something, for the few moments before I write down the first word, I stare at the blank canvas sitting in front of me.

A blank canvas means I can carve out anything of it. Just before starting to write this blog post, I sat and looked at the blank document for about 10 minutes.

“Deadlines kill creativity”.

I’ve heard about it a lot but is it really true? Of course, you cannot tell someone to be at their creative best at any particular time. It just doesn’t work that way. But does putting a deadline to something really kill the creativity for the task? Let’s find out.

I believed that it does kill creativity until a couple of weeks ago - when the lack of deadlines started to mean “it’s not done”. I decided to ponder over it and started wondering how do we decide on things to be done.

I stumbled upon this graph in my research. It is called Eisenhower Box, and is a graph between importance and urgency of a task.

Here’s what the graph is all about. A task always has two factors attached to it - importance and urgency, and based upon these two factors, we decide what to do about it.

Important and Urgent: These things should be done right away. For example, house on fire, studying a night before the exam.

Important but Not Urgent: These things should be properly scheduled to be done later. For example, exercising, learning a new skill.

Not Important but Urgent: These things can be delegated to someone else. For example, someone else’s urgent deadline, meetings.

Not Important and Not Urgent: You can live without doing them. For example, watching “The Big Bang Theory”, going to the Knicks game.

The graph is meant to teach us how to prioritize things, but I see that we (probably unknowingly) already follow half of it. We already know what to do with the important stuff. We already do the important and urgent things right away. And also, we already schedule the important but not urgent things for later.

The Line

Although the two boxes are totally separated by a thick line in the graph, but in reality, there’s a very thin line between these two. And I have a name for that thin line - The Deadline.

Just think about it. When does something important becomes urgent? Only when it is due in some time. After all, that is the whole point of something being urgent. Something being urgent itself means it has to be done quickly otherwise something bad will/might happen.

You cannot delay when your house is on fire. You cannot delay to study (if not already done) if you have to take the exam following morning. You cannot delay the payment of your medical insurance when it is due tonight.

You cannot delay to take care of your baby when she is already crying.

Just because a thing is due in some time, it makes it urgent and thus makes us to prioritize it high on our to-do list (or doing it immediately without putting it on the list first).

So, if a deadline makes something urgent, what does the lack of it causes? Guess. The lack of a deadline keeps the thing lying in “Important but Not Urgent” box and the default action to be performed on that box is to schedule it for later.

It is called scheduling when done for the first time, beyond that, it is called postponing.

The String

The “Important but Not Urgent” box comes with a string attached. The string is that the things in this box should be scheduled, but the term “scheduling” is not understood properly by most of us.

Scheduling means putting a date on it when it will be promoted to the “Important and Urgent” box, not when it can be re-scheduled to be further re-scheduled.

Deadlines might kill creativity, but it get things done.

Takeaway

The one thing you may want to take away from this is if you want something to be done, slap a deadline to it. Everything without a deadline will stay in the box where everything will happen to it but getting it done.

Coming back to me staring at the blank canvas. I could stare at it for much longer waiting to get in my creative zone. But only when I decided to be done with this post by 1pm, I was able to do it (okay, I am 5 minutes late, but it's done).

And no matter how beautiful a blank canvas looks, a filled canvas looks much more beautiful and meaningful. No?

]]>http://mohitmamoria.com/slap-a-deadline/ea71252b-e08c-43ff-a211-b86fe8013804Thu, 16 Oct 2014 07:42:51 GMTLet’s play a game. Call 3 of your best friends and ask them, “Hey buddy, where do you see yourself in next 5 years?”

They will tell you about their dreams, their ambitions and the things they want to have in next 5 years. That’s fantastic! (If they have no fucking idea what they want in next 5 years, get new friends. Remember, you are average of the people you stay with, and surely, you don’t want unambitious people as your best friends.)

Then put up another question to them, “And what are you ready to give up to achieve those dreams?”

Listen carefully to their voice filled with shock, surprise and umm..s. It happens. Most of us have huge dreams, which is a very good thing to have. I, personally, love big dreamers - those who dare to dream of what most cannot.

No one achieves more than what he dreams. Having big dreams is one of the most logical thing to do.

Most of us have dreams, but what most of us don’t have is the price that we are ready to pay for it. And boy, nothing comes for free.

Things that are worth becoming your dreams, should not and do not come for free.

You can get anything, as long as you are ready to pay its price. Want to go to the beach every weekend with your family? Then, starting today, work your ass off on every weekend for next 5 years. There’s no weekend for you for next 5 years and then you may take every weekend off for the rest of your life.

Want a yacht and an island? Starting today, work for 20 hours a day, everyday and then you may have the yacht.

Want to build a billion dollar company? Start taking risks today. Got a full-time day job? Well then, building your own venture is the work of nights. Work for your boss for 9am to 5pm and then for yourself from 8pm to 2 am. Be a Batman!

But I am already too busy!

No, you are not.

I cannot stand people giving excuse of being busy. Well, no one’s busy. It may be hard for you to accept, but you are not busy. You simply have screwed-up priorities, which you need to straighten up a bit.

Everyone’s got time. Stop watching fucking ‘Game Of Thrones’.

Beware of Burnout

Okay okay, I know what you’re thinking - “Come on man, I don’t want to burnout in first 3 months itself.”

Well, then I want to tell you that power of your desire should be greater than power of burning out. Need a simple trick? Don’t go to bed satisfied. Go to bed in middle of an important and urgent work, so that you have your mind unsatisfied by previous day’s work and ready to focus on it as soon you wake up.

Do NOT go to bed satisfied.

The day you sleep satisfied, you’ll NOT have a to-do list ready to help you kickstart the next day.

What about work - life balance?

What about it? Screw it!

By trying to balance between these two, you’ll neither be able to focus on work nor on life. My suggestion? Give 70% to your work for 30% of your life and then 30% to your work for 70% of your life. But work first.

Focusing on both at the same time will yield you mediocre life and a mediocre work.

Big but Weak dreams?!

Yes, big dreams are a great thing. But big and weak dreams aren’t. Your dreams should be powerful enough to wake you up everyday before your alarm goes off. Your dreams should be so attractive that nothing else attracts you.

Big dreams are a great thing. But big and weak dreams aren’t.

No dream is powerful by default. Here are a few things which you can do to inject power in your dreams.

Optimism is an unfair advantage. It is not something that you learn in a day/week/month. It is a habit - start developing it - from TODAY!

Books are your best friends. There’s no powerful drug than a good book. A good book injects the kind of motivation inside you that nothing else can. Start reading today.

Identify your competitors. When I said that books are the most powerful drug, I was lying. They are second-most powerful drugs. Most powerful ones are your competitors. Identify them, their strengths, their weaknesses, train yourself and then punch them right in their face at the right time.

What do I do right away?

I have always been the preacher of doing things now. This time, I am actually going to tell you what can you do to begin the journey today.

Pull out a piece of white paper and make a heading - Dreams. Write your three biggest dreams (or just your biggest one) under it. Write the dreams, which are measurable, like, “Building a company doing annual revenue of $10 millions in 2 years”.

Make another heading below it - Price. Write the price that you’re ready to pay to achieve those dreams. Don’t be philosophical. Write exact things, like, “Work for 20 hours a day, not be afraid of taking risks, not be afraid to stay out of contact from loved ones while working on my dreams”.

Make third heading below it - Deadline. Write the exact date when you want to achieve those dreams. Remember - exact date, like “August 20, 2016”.

Tell about this paper to one of your best friend.

Read this paper everyday, twice.

Come on, get your asses to work! There’s a lot left to do to see your dreams turning into reality.

Don’t agree with my rant? I am always a learner. Let’s talk in the comments below or get hold of my neck on Twitter. :)